Example 1--Fact or Fiction--Lithographs/Posters

Circus Historian Dick Flint in a private email, rue's the difficulty in looking at old circus woodcuts/lithographs and trying to discern whether you are looking at fact or an artist's rendering of fact. Does the "advertising/self serving paper below, bear any resemblance to the photo above as to "what it actually was?" Or whether it validates this jackpot: "my understanding is that this clyde beatty-trained act (with some help on getting anna may to work with the cats) is that this is the only act that we know of that featured both a lion and a tiger riding an elephant at the same time. there have been several tiger riding elephants and a few lion riding elephants, but has anyone else put both animals on an elephant at the same time?



But maybe the male with tusks in the first lithograph validates this statement, and maybe they got the two elephants confused and put the wrong one in the arena: "This act was thrown together almost overnight and I remember hearing that during the dress rehearsal at the Chicago Coliseum "Anna May" went right thru the arena and back to the picket line. For some time afterward she was accompanied by another elephant that stood outside the arena as a steadying influence."